Michael Gregory, Photographer

Parking Lot

2011-02-06T16:49:00.001-06:00

Parking Lot
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

Independence, MO

The Sneaky Mister: "Umbrella" by Rihanna

2010-08-12T13:56:00.000-05:00

For reasons it would take a super-internet-al¹ word count to explain, this restores my faith in music as a viable hobby/amusement.

¹Writing on the internet automatically makes me a sub-literate moron, which is nice, b/c I can make up words instead of searching memory/thesaurus for a better one.

Dying of Natural Causes

2010-07-06T07:36:00.003-05:00

I thought this was interesting article in the New York Times. Apparently there a lot of chairs in major orchestras left unfilled; the Times mentions as a peripheral issue the real heart of the matter: orchestras are not as flush as they once were. This is encouraging.

I grew up on "classical" music. The good people of the state of California spent God-only-knows-how-much on my education in what is really the art music tradition of Western Europe from 1450 to 1950. I am calling the end of Aaron Copland's productive decade in the 1940's the end of the tradition, because that was the last time composers writing standalone music for symphony orchestra really held any conversation with the public. Since then European art music has been alternately parted out to Hollywood and the various museums that comprise classical music: local orchestras, universities, horrifically distasteful TV ads for luxury cars...

Anyway, I developed my guitar technique on classical music. I learned music theory analyzing classical music. And as I advanced as a musician, the less appeal this tradition held. I still have my favorite pieces - e.g. I listen to Bach's D Major Magnificat every Christmas. By myself. And that's the problem - the relevance of this music lies about halfway between Shakespeare and pre-industrial farming tools. I could easily find other people who like the same classical music I like, or I could listen to the music that everyone I already know likes.

fizzle... lost my will to expound... go hear the chicago symphony while you can LOL

New Thrift Store Paintings

2010-06-25T14:38:00.001-05:00

WTF
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

Photography urge comes and goes lately. It came on in a big way while looking around a flea market/thrift store type place in Grandview.

Practice Video Journal 8

2010-06-23T10:12:00.000-05:00

I decided to start a video practice journal/blog to keep track of my musical development, which seems to be picking up pace lately after a long plateau. I searched YouTube for "practice journal" and found this gem, which appears to be a couple of deleted scenes from a David Lynch joint. Don't miss 3:09 - LOL.

As Seen on TV - a tribute to doing it wrong

2010-06-03T04:57:00.000-05:00

How many times has this happened to YOU!?!

Roy Hargrove & RH Factor - The Joint

2010-05-29T02:06:00.000-05:00

Just got home from two gigs in a row - seven solid hours of relatively high energy playing. You'd think I'd be dead tired, but I'm thinking about how much better a musician I want to be. So I'm up watching great player on YouTube. Check out Roy Hargrove.

I saw him as just plain old "Roy Hargrove" (straight ahead jazz) at the Folly when they were doing their great jazz series. He was great then, but I would love to see this "RH Factor" lineup. They are killin here.

Pat Metheny Jazz Guitar Class - 03 - All The Things You Are

2010-05-24T23:39:00.000-05:00

Pat. Mofo. Metheny. You get the impression that this is the song he starts absentmindedly playing when he picks up a guitar. And that he has found something new in the changes every time he's played it. Every day. For thirty years.

His time is so good he almost sounds better with a click on 2+4 than with a killer band. Damn.

What Separates Us from the Animals

2010-05-19T07:55:00.003-05:00

Tax Evasion
Relatively Low Curiosity about Smells
Bars/Glass
Animal age is computed as a simple product, while human age is calculated by a complex differential equation formulated to make oneself appear as young as is plausible in any given group
While embarrassment over nakedness has been overcome, embarrassment over dated fashions has gained strength. The evolutionary purpose of this trait is as yet unclear.
Inability to lick own genitals (so far)!
That there are no hipsters in nature is a common misconception; some chimps are born hipsters, but in amazing display of social complexity, chimps beat their hipsters into repression with Miley Cyrus brand scented candles from Wal-Mart. Unironically.
Snooze function.
This thing separates animals only
Electric guitars. Frogs play banjo, which of course requires no electricity.

BTW someone (my dad?) took me to see this when I was a wee tot. I’m pretty fuzzy on the details of the plot, but I still remember this song. It f***ing owns. I liked movie music a lot better when it was much more moody and sentimental – songs that set the tone for a fantastic (ordinarily unbelievable), maudlin story. Nowadays Hollywood takes itself waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too seriously; and nothing goes into a movie that can’t stand on its own as a consumer product with mass market appeal.

Brutally Repressive, Hopelessly Backward Culture Maybe Not so Bad

2010-05-17T10:00:00.003-05:00

Not too long ago I heard an old episode of “This American Life” in which the subject of one of the stories was an Afghan man who had been in love with a girl whom he couldn’t marry because she had no dowry.

Wait – the subject wasn’t really the Afghan man, but the precious little feelings of the sheltered, over-educated, white, middle class media professional “producing” the story. As Ira explains in every episode, “Each week of course we choose a theme and bring you different kinds of stories on that theme, subsequently ditching the story in favor of our emotional reactions and miscellaneous quasi-philosophical musings.” So the Afghan man was maybe the nominal subject.

So this guy from BFA was sooooo in love some offstage girl – they were both about 20 if I remember correctly – and some sheltered, Western, white, overeducated, middle class woman decided to solve his problem by donating a dowry. It didn’t work, and the Afghan dude’s parents made him marry someone else anyway. The parents talked about objections to the son’s choice that nakedly betrayed a espousal of eugenics, which didn’t rattle the reporter half as much as the thought of Romeo not following his balls wherever they led, chasing his true love at all costs. “This is nothing at all like a Sandra Bullock romantic comedy,” the reporter must have thought.

So the reporter asks the guy whether he loves the woman with whom he has an arranged engagement to be married – with whom he has spent relatively little time. The dude says, “Yes, because she is my wife.” And the reporter/producer just lets it hang there, as if it was the craziest thing ever spoken. Of course loving your wife because it is the right thing to do – and lovely and happy and mutually beneficial – is what everyone did up until some time in the last 100 years. You either choose to love your wife because it is the right thing to do, or you pretend to love your wife in front of friends and neighbors because you don’t want them to know that you’re a selfish asshole. It’s what the reporter’s grandparents almost certainly did.

It was so striking to me that this Afghan cab driver, with nothing I would call education and not a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of – this guy was so advanced in understanding beyond our pale American city dwelling friend on a subject so basic to everyday life, the American was blissfully unaware that he was not the one in possession of advanced knowledge.

Okay this next one is not an argument supporting any larger issue or anything of implied importance – it was just a disconnected thought that occurred while watching the doc “Afghan Star,” a chronicle of an “American Idol” knockoff in Afghanistan.

Two of the contestants were women, a move by the show’s producers that was already considered daring. One of the female contestants was very old-fashioned and literally had the support (via SMS votes) of the Taliban – LOL I know, right?! The other was a bad girl who, after she got voted off the show and got to sing one last song, used the opportunity to dance and remove her head covering. The whole country was in an uproar, and this induced a tangential exploration of clothing-related mores. The poor documentarians interviewed a lot of people, trying to get material on why the Islam-influenced culture felt so strongly about ancient clothing rules, but as is typical of such man-on-the-street business anywhere, they only got colorful reassertions of things everyone already knew; nobody was able to argue for the rules or even give historical perspective – just “You have to because it is what you do.”

In this expansive vacuum of ideas, sounds, and imagery, my mind wandered to what it would be like to force American women to cover everything but their eyes. Of course when you daydream about women, there is only one direction in which all hypotheses lead, so I wondered how hot would it be to get a woman in bed who had wrapped up everything but the corneas? Mighty hot, I imagine. You would probably sprout wood as soon as you saw her elbows; and your pulse could be taken visually by the time you had her down to what amounts to business casual in contemporary USA.

So there is an upside. I’m just sayin’...

Dysart on KWWL.flv

2010-05-15T09:22:00.000-05:00

See a video of my hometown, Dysart, IA with my mom in it (second from the R in the blue hat lineup). Note that the hook of the story is that there are multiple businesses and things to do in this town. Population is sub-1k.

YMO Day Tripper Live

2010-05-15T09:07:00.000-05:00

Strangely compelling. WTF is the date on this? Video looks like 1980's, but there is a guy playing a much older modular synth, but the New Wave influence would have worked in the 2000's as well...

DJ Earworm - United State of Pop 2009 (Blame It on the Pop) - Mashup of ...

2010-05-15T08:46:00.000-05:00

A new level of mashup. I have to assume that this DJ is also a talented musician. In my mind, this is the knockout punch against the argument that DJing isn't a musical performance.

On the American-ness of Apple Products

2010-05-14T13:53:00.001-05:00

At the introduction of the Apple iPad, for some reason that doubtless stems from some arbitrary event within the realm of professional journalism, people suddenly became aware of current global manufacturing conventions. The iPad is assembled in China, just like pretty much all competitively priced consumer electronics. Just like consumer electronics have been for many years.

The heart of this favorite media topic is the old “Buy American” [Uh-MRRR-kin] saw. If you don’t understand at a glance what’s wrong with this argument, then Sherlock Holmes infers that you passed macroeconomics with the help of that dumpy girl you strung along with smooth talk until the end of the semester; shame on you.

The dumpy girl isn’t impressed with news reports on Chinese assembly of allegedly American products [organist hammers on diminished chords as mustachioed villain appears]. And she is unimpressed with Larry-the-Cable-guy-in-a-Three-Thousand-Dollar-Suit union leaders issuing statements about the immoral, unethical theft of American jobs.

The parts in any electronic product featuring new technology come from all over the world, and the final product will be assembled somewhere where a laborer’s time can be had cheaply. That formula hasn’t changed much since the advent of the steam ship. If you’re wondering why iPods can’t be assembled in the USA, look into how and why unskilled labor has been legislated into extinction here. Apple didn’t create this environment - the whole of corporate commerce in its entire history isn’t solely responsible - Apple merely operates in this reality. And if they want to compete with e.g. Sony, they have to play by the same rules as Sony. Sony also farms out assembly of most products to Asian factories where people work much cheaper than would anyone in Japan.

The more interesting facet of the relationship between Apple users and our American-ness is how readily we are willing to accept a virtual universe that is ruled from the top down with a heavy hand. When I recently started teaching guitar lessons again I bought an iPod touch as a low-cost alternative to a new notebook computer. I was amazed that I had to bow on bended knee, pledge allegiance to iTunes, and give a credit card number before I could even boot the device. WTF?! More recently I bought a new motherboard and memory for my desktop computer. I went out of my way to get something based on the same chipset so I wouldn’t have to reinstall anything, yet iTunes informed me that I had used up one of my allotted 5 syncs, that I had a few left, and I had better watch it. And by the way, I had to start over with iTunes. This was the only piece of software that didn’t make the transition to the new hardware. I understand how this is done – iTunes is keyed to some piece of uniquely identifiable hardware on the mobo (probably the network card) and the new mobo looks like a new computer to iTunes – but that understanding does nothing to ameliorate the annoyance.

This is what bugs me about Apple – the audacity to dictate every little detail of how the hardware is used; you get the impression setting up your iPod in iTunes that the device actually belongs to Apple and you are allowed to use it at their pleasure. Even more it bugs me that it doesn’t bug others. And worst it bugs me that it didn’t bug me enough to immediately return to Best Buy for a refund. I am not used to cowing to someone else’s will for my stuff, be it guitars, cars, or digital devices. If I don’t like the way a guitar plays I will hack out the neck with a chisel and build a new one. If I want to quad-boot my computer to Ubuntu, XP, Vista, and the minimal OS that came with the motherboard, try to stop me. But with my iPod, so far I have been content to grab my ankles and suffer through. The iPod, unlike any other device I’ve owned, is actively resistant to any kind of customization. At all. Period. Stop asking if you know what’s good for you.

You can’t get direct access to files on an iPod.
You can’t write your own software (apart from the draconian approval process through iTunes)
Assuming you go through the trouble of getting your software approved, you can’t move data on or off the device except wirelessly through HTTP
iPod is suxxorz

I think my problem is that I object to everything about the iPod on principle, but I have such abundant disincentive to do anything about it. For one thing, I had very low expectations for the device in the first place. I basically wanted a looper and a metronome for guitar lessons, and nothing else. So when that much worked flawlessly – plus I found Beatmaker, 4 Track, and Xewton Studio, the Blue stereo mic and its software, not to mention all the useful apps and entertaining distractions that all run without issue – it became very hard to look at the iPod as anything but a great solution to a particular need.

It turns out that there is a way to open the OS and make the hardware available to yourself. It is called jailbreaking and it a software hack that gives you control over basic things like the filesystem and execution permissions. So it turns out the iProducts are American after all.

If I really wanted to burn through an entire afternoon reading tutorials and other documentation, then fiddling until it worked, I could jailbreak my iPod and I would be back in control. But I’m not going to, and neither are most iProduct users. I suspect that this is how things have always been; most Americans don’t hot rod their own cars or wind their own guitar pickups or hand build additions to their own homes. It’s probably always been a small percentage, and I take great comfort knowing that that small percentage is still beavering away iPods, hacking them until they are free and self-determining. And covered in bland, melty cheese. Wearing logoed T-shirts and baseball caps. And loud and fat and ignorant. So proud [wipes tear].

Lawnmowers, Plug Up

2010-05-14T10:46:00.003-05:00

Two questions burning a hole in mind this morning.

Why are mower mufflers a single, ineffective layer of inline baffling when it would be relatively cheap and easy to bring the motor's sound down by 30dB with an auto type muffler? Are manufacturers really that cheap? Even higher end mowers have the same loud output. There must be a reason, but I can't find an answer.

WTF is with the substitution "plug up" for "plug in"? Is it regional? The first place I ever heard it was at the Monday jazz jam at the Blue Room (before I got my house gig up the street at the Juke House). I assumed it was part of jazz culture, but since I've heard it all over. What is its etymology? Who uses it? How long can I stretch out this research to avoid doing any actual work?

Quebe Sisters Band halftime at Dallas Mavs

2010-05-13T10:31:00.000-05:00

If there's anything NBA fans love, it's Country Music, Pre-Bebop Swing, and the early 1950's. The Mavericks cover all the bases with this halftime show.

Amazing ensemble singing, especially considering that they are on 3 separate mics. I wonder if they mic them the old fashioned way in other venues. Total time machine.

LOC to Store All Tweets for Posterity

2010-05-12T07:24:00.000-05:00

I heard a story on NPR outlining Library of Congress' plan to archive all of Twitter as an important source document of our time.

It occurred to me that what would be far more useful to future historians is some proof of our near-absolute inability to discern what is meaningful. A better source document to archive might be a short wire story with a headline like, "Twitter's Entire Archive Headed to the Library of Congress."

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/09/nation/la-na-twitter-20100510

Bitch, U Brekfis.

2010-03-18T23:29:00.001-05:00

Bitch, u brekfis. Meme countdown = T minus 12 and counting.

2010-02-16T08:48:00.002-06:00

Honestly, have you ever seen such a thing? If you are looking for a great time-killer at work, read the comments in Stryper videos. It's a complete universe.

Thrift Store Painting

2010-02-03T13:43:00.001-06:00

Thrift Store Painting
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

Check it out

Allen Hinds

2010-01-31T02:55:00.002-06:00

Allen Hinds. I actually lost a job to this guy once - on my friends' CD.

Honestly he did a better job than I could have at the time. And he has only gotten better in the 15 years since. Check it out - so much soul in so much kickassness.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

2010-01-31T02:32:00.002-06:00

Finally saw "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." It absolutely owns. I had written it off as another POS constructed under the Poochie Paradigm, but after the 1M'th time I heard how great it was, I granted it 10 minutes' audience.

This animated kids' movie satirizes a lot of things that actually had it coming, from disaster movie cliches to mainstream news media. It even cannibalizes its own genre with touches like a sidekick animal that is a dumb animal.

It even kept getting better in the credits, which featured the following old school simple pop song. I think the one thing that stands out about the whole movie is that it is obviously guided by individual vision; it wasn't hashed out in a committee under the direction of Bad Taste Guy Who Signs the Checks. There are lots of gags that are just existentially funny that made it into the production, lots of touches that don't advance a rigidly formed three part dramatic plot or fit hackneyed joke guidelines - and this song is over the credits because someone liked it or commissioned it or whatever.

I suppose it is possible that this artist was channeled into the movie production as part of some entertainmedia superconglomero-vertintegrational-promosynergy stunt, but it still seems like a great complement to the movie - a real, old fashioned, sincere, goofy pop song.

No Trespassing

2010-01-26T09:42:00.001-06:00

No Trespassing
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

New in "Misc"

Light Pole

2010-01-26T09:41:00.001-06:00

Light Pole
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

New picture in "Roadside Attractions"

Wet Bear

2010-01-24T11:40:00.001-06:00

Wet Bear
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

New photos on my Flickr.

Zoo In Snow

2010-01-14T15:39:00.001-06:00

ZooInSnow (105 of 5)
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

Went for a stroll around the zoo as soon as the temp hit 40º

There was never a time...

2009-12-17T11:30:00.001-06:00

There was never a time...
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

New Real Bad Wrong

Autumn Hickman Mills

2009-11-13T23:32:00.002-06:00

Autumn Hickman Mills
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

Finally got back to still [/real] photography after a looooong video project. Here are some pics from my neighborhood.

Mike's People to Watch in '76

2009-11-07T22:09:00.000-06:00

Mike called this one right.

Stick Man Rasslin

2009-10-30T21:53:00.004-05:00

I remember seeing an animated stick man kung fu fight somewhere on the web about a decade ago. It was a big hit before youtube or myspace or any of that mess. Apparently the stick man fight has been going strong underground ever since.

This might have been the original one:

And this one has over FOUR MILLION VIEWS.

This Holiday Season

2009-10-30T10:46:00.002-05:00

You gotta love Donny Hathaway. Loving Reuben Studdard is optional. I went to see RS at the Midland when Kem opened for him. It was a great show.

What we need is for all peoples of the universe to make pithy statements of love this holiday season. Amen. Buy American. I mean, Amurrrkn.

Love this gittar solo. Damn. Remember when pop was glossy and smooth?

The rest of the essay.

Avg Human Weight = 60#

2009-10-26T21:52:00.001-05:00

Enjoy the music ironically if you must. Scorn the trainers who whip children into shape as a collective performance machine. But the skill can't be denied.

Nice Endcap on the Autotune Backlash

2009-10-25T10:34:00.002-05:00

Seems like the world discovered Photoshop and Autotune at around the same time. The popular conception of Photoshop got a lot closer to how professionals actually use these tools. With Autotune, it has pretty much always been used as a special effect to get the robot voice. Big products have always - and probably will always - use Melodyne, Waves Tune, and the simple, low-level tools in Logic and ProTools, which are all much MUCH more transparent.

So the AutoTune backlash edges out the Photoshop backlash for the title of most retarded fashionable opinion so far in the digital age. But I thought this was a nice little recording. It actually sounds like 80's hip-hop - the rough and rowdy world of samplers. I.e. it's much more backward looking than forward.

Rockwell Test Results

2009-10-24T00:05:00.002-05:00

A few days ago I got a last minute call for an R&B show. At rehearsal we ran a whole bunch of Michael Jackson songs and I finally caved in and got all nostalgic like everyone else. I was just watching old MJ videos on YouTube when I came across this. Seems like this style of music has been getting better lately.

How to make your bass sound great.

2009-10-23T12:25:00.006-05:00

I sat down this morning to hack a bass in the same way I've done my last 4 basses. It occurred to me that most people must not know about these - otherwise everyone would do it. Here are some secrets to making your bass sound great.

Get rid of onboard preamps. The best OBP's are weak compared to the pre in a decent bass amp. OBP is a very old idea that had its time.
Strip the electronics. I mean gut it. My basses generally run from the pickups directly to a wireless transmitter - no pots. Even if you fail to leap the mental/emotional hurdle of discarding your crappy OBP, you can get a lot more out of your pickups if they aren't loaded down by pots; at the very least get rid of the volume and blend pots in front of the OBP and replace the pots with switches.
Use are wireless transmitter. This takes cable capacitance out of the picture and gives you a clean, consistent gain stage in front of your amp's pre. It also makes for less stage bumbling and gives you a convenient way to mute your instrument without relying on 1940's potentiometer technology.
Take the time to find the right strings. ProSteels will make the dullest bass zingy, and worn flats will give any bass a good, soft-edged thump.
Learn to pick an instrument. The stiffness of the neck is what makes a bass great, and really nothing else. Some bottom budget clunkers are great, and some expensive basses have no magic in them. You have to sort through a pile of instruments to find a good bass of any brand or model. Laminated necks are more consistent, but if you look it is easy to find a cheap maple neck that sings.
Consider giving up the low B. The correct solution to the problem of flabby B-stings is a multi-scale fingerboard, such as that employed by Sheldon Dingwall. However, because some a-hole filed a patent on the centuries-old idea of multi-scale fingerboards, manufacturers have been slow to adopt the design. I.e. you are never going to get a good B out of a 35" string. So the choices are: buy a Dingwall (worth it if you can afford it), have a luthier build you a multi-scale bass, or stick with 4-string. It's less than half an octave you're giving up.
Get your tone from your fingers. That's actually number 1 through 10 - the rest of this stuff is just icing on the cake.

In case you don't know/care who Gary Willis is, here is a GW student using this technique on hard groovin improv:

Esperanza Spalding

2009-10-20T10:23:00.002-05:00

This is what jazz needs - an adorable young woman who writes/plays catchy, poppy music. She will draw 10x more people to real jazz than any mofo horn player.

West Side Story/Waterfront Mashup

2009-10-19T10:21:00.000-05:00

I never heard this song before today - great groove and a good old 80's pop-R&B bridge. Also check out Jets vs. Sharks.

The Cleveland Show

2009-10-18T16:34:00.003-05:00

Now everyone can see how "Family Guy" looks to me.

Interview Magazine

2009-10-17T18:46:00.002-05:00

I subscribed to Interview magazine. After the first issue arrived yesterday, I am no closer to understanding the super-gay world of fashion photography, but the rag is very enjoyable.

Here's a quote from the first issue I got, September 2009.

When you're with people that are aware of the fact that you're a photographer, they'll say, "Oh, look at that! That's something to take a picture of!" That's almost a sure sign that you shouldn't do it. - Ari Marcopoulos

Loop Soup

2009-10-17T16:04:00.003-05:00

Pretty cool boomerang type loop jam. BTW this type of thing is much easier to do in Ableton Live.

The Beatrrs

2009-10-17T10:09:00.001-05:00

Everything about this is awesome. I mean everything but the end result.

Lee's Summit Native Pat Metheny in Kansas City (Rhythm & Ribs2007)

2009-10-16T10:16:00.001-05:00

I was at this show. It was even more awesomer than it sounds here. This tune supports the theory that Metheny at heart is more than a little into 1970's progressive rock. Hearing him blow over a simple groove makes me wish he would get with some project akin to Roy Hargrove's HR Factor.

BTW about the GR300: most guitar players are tragically unaware that you can do all of this modular synth stuff with software now. The great thing is that it works pretty much exactly like the old stuff did - simple stages that do a single thing according to a few easy-to-understand variables. Where each stage used to be housed in a physical enclosure or a square of panel-mounted components with a dark line drawn around them on the interface side, now with software each stage is just a drag-and-drop widget.

There are lots of platforms with which you can roll your own, like Reaktor and SynthEdit; or you can use one of the innumerable premade synths that have all the components arranged already, such as Tripp Lead and Guitar Controlled Bass Synth from FrettedSynth. Basically any modular synth software that lets you assign control voltage can be controlled with the signal that comes out on that 1/4" cable on a normal guitar.

Now if you are truly a lazy, luddite guitar player, you can do what you always do to solve a musical problem: buy a pedal. Electro-Harmonix, the undisputed kings of making terrific stuff for blue collar musicians, offers all kinds of boxes that do synthesis. Micro Synth is one. POG is also unbelievably cool. Digitech also includes synth capabilities in a lot of products, from standalone synth pedals to very inexpensive multi-effects DSP units. There are other companies that make specialized little modular synths for guitar pedalboards, but the prices get into boutique territory.

Check it out, you lazy guitar players; it will only take away a few minutes from your busy schedule of practicing the same old crappy pentatonic riffs that everyone else plays.

Badass among Badasses

2009-10-15T03:41:00.001-05:00

Bernard Purdie. Respect the pocket.

David Haynes

2009-10-14T00:56:00.003-05:00

Amazing Grace. Amazing drums.

JJ Grey & Mofro

2009-10-13T00:38:00.000-05:00

Let's enumerate what this music video has going for it:

down and dirty groove
solid, traditional engineering
humor
solid, traditional cinematography

Uuungh!

2009-10-12T00:51:00.000-05:00

I saw a video with this gal a long time ago and forgot about it. This grooves real hard. She's like an undercover Marcus Miller - and she sings!

Embedding is disabled on this video, so you will have to make the jump.

Slide Guitar that Does NOT Suck.

2009-10-11T10:13:00.005-05:00

Slide guitar. Good music. Scientists must have dedicated massive resources to overcoming this longstanding mutual exclusivity.

Mr. Spriggs

2009-10-10T00:35:00.001-05:00

It has come to the attention of management that some of you still have not viewed this important training video. Please take a moment before our next meeting to bring yourself up to speed.

New Misc Photos

2009-10-09T14:55:00.001-05:00

Three Balls
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

In Misc set at Flickr. Had to go for a walk w/ new lens to get it out of my system so I can get back to work.

My Documentary Treatment

2009-10-09T11:25:00.002-05:00

I am presently working round the clock on the treatment, rough cut, and narration script of my current project, a documentary on the history of my church congregation. It is a fascinating history spanning the late days of the American frontier, Kansas City in its boomtown days, the entire modern era, and the present.

I just wrote this line in the treatment and thought I should share it with the world, considering that it probably won’t make it into the film in any form:

Scene: Reenactment In 1897 on the Jesse Barlow farm in Lisle, MO, wife Emily goes to draw water at the family well down by the railroad tracks. As she is executing her chore, she finds a newspaper called The Gospel Trumpet, a publication started in 1881 to promote the principles of D.S. Warner's brand new Church of God. She reads it and is pursuaded of its merits.
[A prominent KC Historian] describes how this is as American as apple pie, baseball, and coochie shots of celebrities.

More Driver's Seat Photos

2009-09-30T07:45:00.001-05:00

Had a little extra time this morning and uploaded some driver’s seat photos.

Added some more pics taken from driver's seat.

2009-09-03T12:22:00.001-05:00

Iowa
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

I am up in Iowa again for a show and the countryside is interesting to see. I have made several pictures from the driver's seat.

Grizzly Man

2009-08-21T00:09:00.002-05:00

I have been working a documentary video lately – a change of pace for sure. Most of the skills from still photography transfer, but there so many others required. I have been reading on everything from myth’s role in cinematic storytelling to camera movement, and of course I have been watching documentaries that are supposed to be exemplary.

One that is often suggested is Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man, which does in fact own. However, it is not as entertaining as an insightful account of an unhinged nature lover as it is a glut of schadenfruede – a sort of feature lenght “Leave Britney Alone.” Also there are the foxes that break into the subject’s camp and steal his hat. Comedy gold.

2009-08-15T11:42:00.001-05:00

This is the greatest prank call of all time. This telemarketer actually tries to close the deal on mortuary services after the prankster tells him that he is going to kill himself.

More Roadside Pics

2009-08-14T21:48:00.001-05:00

scrub 3
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

Not sure whether this qualifies as necrophilia, since this blog has lain stagnant long enough to be declared dead in even the most conservative pockets of Haiti. Here are a bunch of "new" pics from the driver's seat (newly dumped off card). This is *so* fascinating.

Testing Blogjet

2009-07-23T01:43:00.001-05:00

Haven’t posted anything new a few days.

I went to a lecture exactly a week ago. Seems like longer. It’s been so long ago these people are already old.

Post-It's Post

2009-07-18T11:22:00.002-05:00

This is the first video I've seen in a long time - way too long - by a professional creative type that actually has a fun, creative spirit, and isn't fundamentally concerned with the fashions of technology or entertainment.

Roadside Attractions

2009-07-15T22:20:00.001-05:00

Roadside Attractions
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

Started a new Flickr set for photos I take from the driver's seat. These are from a recent trip to/from Lincoln, NE for a shoot.

Satirization of Anti-Intellectualism in Public Discourse... Shorty.

2009-07-15T08:43:00.006-05:00

It's an inspired melody that makes you walk around, absentmindedly singing, "Cancers! Heart disease! Respiratory disease!" I have been bobbing my head to the ubiquitous Autotune the News songs ever since I officially became the last person on earth to learn about them.

It finally occurred to me what is so satisfying about them: their recontextualization of talking heads' inanities, malapropisms, and conceits is actually more fitting than their original settings. Public discourse - from actual congressional hearings to shows like The View that are relatively open about their entertainment slant - has become so inconsequential and ridiculous that it fits seamlessly into the R&B universe of shawties, crunk'd out partiez, and pimpin'.

"I'm an angry gorilla. I heard you needed me." LMAO! These guys have skewered the whole entertainment-news industry with this character.

The character "Junkie Einstein" has to be one of the greatest satirizations ever. He is a man with great faculties of reason, but he has crippled his own mind with amusements. It's as biting as it is hilarious: "My brain says no, but my body says yes."

Kudos to the Gregory brothers (and sister-in-law) for putting politics in its proper place: that of engaging, first rate, inconsequential, mindless entertainment. BTW one of the brothers is named Michael Gregory. There are lots of other Michael Gregorys - a session musician in Nashville, a smarmy fashion[/softcore porn] photographer in Australia, at least two working musicians in NYC, etc...

Original Art Work

2009-07-13T15:39:00.004-05:00

I came upon this little gem at 2nd Chance Thrift Store on Wornall in Kansas City, MO. I have been thinking for some time about how discarded items at thrift stores evoke the lives of previous owners, and this one got my gears turning on what kind of life the artist might have had.

Clearly this was an art student who wanted to express himself. He expressed the desire to express himself through this expressive painting. I try to stay away from expressions like, "Abstraction Expressionism was a useless dead-end that legitimized every bad tendency in the art establishment," but sometimes thrift store items call for a strong stance.

No matter how suggestive an artifact, it always excludes most of the specifics of the previous owner's life that would transform it from a mystery to a banality. With this painting, for example, I can't work out whether it was his mother or his girlfriend who put him through his angry three semesters of college.

2009-07-08T18:24:00.005-05:00

I thought I'd treat myself to a little television nonsense during my dinner and downloaded the Michael Jackson Funeral Show - or whatever they called his event at Staples Center. On one hand, I feel really bad for the guy, seeing his passing from the earth made into a spectacle of such rank foolishness. I don't care what you've done - once you die your account on earth is settled and your memory deserves to see your remains treated respectfully.

On the other hand, there are a lot of fans still alive. Man, the Schadenfreude is at toxic levels. I only made it through about 5 minutes of skimming the MJF Show before I thought I'd rather just remember him in my own way, so I searched for the choicest artifacts of his stardom, the music videos from the mid-1980's.

Read the comments attached to this video. You will not be sorry. It's right up there with some of the best misunderstood movie reviews on Amazon.com.

BTW, yes, I know really needs one more blog post with some trite, pithy truisms spun out of careless reaction to Michael Jackson's passing. But I figured it was worth a post because the link that should make you laugh. There is no higher form of discourse than amusement.

How not to present your pictures

2009-07-08T03:26:00.001-05:00

Museums and galleries have traditionally displayed photographs as big prints hanging on walls. You peruse them at your own pace and in any order you choose, even if a certain order is suggested. Captions and other information are usually provided, and you can absorb that information any way you like, or not at all. There is generally an air of gravitas that inspires reverent quiet.A lot of these conventions translate well to the books published to accompany big/important exhibitions.

Compare that with your uncle Hobart's slide show, where you willingly travel to his house, march unfettered into the rumpus room, sit down, remain seated when the lights go out, and then slowly surrender your will to live as uncle Hobart reacts to each 35mm film slide, extemporizing a disjointed narrative that falls somewhere somewhere between disorder and schizophrenia.

The contemporary analog of the slide show is the multimedia slideshow DVD. You would think these would be more tolerable to sit through, considering the forethought, discipline, and self-editing that is built into the process, but still they manage to raise the bar for bad taste. Now uncle Hobart adds his favorite songs to the mix - a sort of air support in the assault on your sensibilities. If uncle actually did have any pictures you might want to see, there is new prime real estate available in Tartarus, because Hobart is going to follow the long trend toward cinematizing photographs; the borders of the image - photography's most important design element - will not be visible because of the asinine scaling and movement that are supposed to simulate cinematic dollying, trucking, and panning.

How is it that the gallery's cool, minimal approach to displaying pictures is so satisfying and inviting, but the sincerity and hard work that poor uncle Hobart puts into his slide shows yield little more than frustration? Is the content really that different? I don't think that's it at all; the art world is full of examples of shows in which gallery walls are crowded with recontextualized vernacular photography (crappy little prints of snapshots, among others); uncle Hobart's pictures could easily have been displayed in a hip New York gallery in something like Stephen Shore's All the Meat You Can Eat, and enthusiastic, intellectual crowds would laud Hobart's work as great.

I think it has more to do with the basic way in which people experience photographs, and how presentation either encourages or discourages that experience. Any photo can be a contemplative object in a way that is preverbal, preintellectual; any child can look at a picture depicting something abstract like sharing and go to work on what is happening in the scene, where it is, what might happen next.

Pictures invite viewers to discover the surface of another world - to speculate about its underlying reality. Photographs by themselves demand that you draw your own conclusions, make your own story. When the para-descriptive information is taken from the small card politely placed out of the way on the wall next to a photo - or the text on the opposite page in a book - and forced into the viewer's mind by uncle Hobart's ill-considered ramblings, it spoils some of the fun of viewing a new picture.

There is another level on which Hobart is at war with the photographic sensibility. The normal viewing of photographs has been beautifully illustrated in a number of movies in which a child or young adolescent or Adam Sandler finds some magical way of freezing time. This device is a metaphor for the way a photograph allows the viewer to roam through a world that is frozen in time, free of haste or any compunction to interact with the surface of the depicted world. This is one of the things that makes viewing pictures so fun - you can go crazy in a self-contained little fantasy world, discovering explicit details, guessing implied details about its inhabitants and accoutrement, generally just taking your time to do whatever you want inside that frame and any space implied beyond it. The forced pace of Hobart's slideshows is destructive enough to this important aspect of appreciating photography, but when he uses animation to change the frame of the photograph within the frame of the viewing screen, there really isn't much left of photography's quiddity; it has become something else, and mostly likely Hobart's skills are not up to the task of jumping between media. Then again, Hobart is pretty old and there is a lot we don't know about him - maybe he worked as a big time film editor in the Noir Age. Mom said nobody knows what he was doing out in California for those two years after high school...

So there's a great heap of fetid negativity for you - that's what I do best. By now you get the gist - I am a cranky, frustrated photographer who would rather blog than make pictures or do any productive work. Wait, no - the gist was supposed to be that the slideshow is an unideal mode for displaying photographs. The slide show - and especially the faux-cinematic animated slideshow - is really a medium altogether different from photography. And yes, I'm cranky. Sorry - I'll work on that.

The easiest ways of displaying photos are still the best. For example, there is no reason you can't come back from your vacation to Hawaii and make relatively large prints and display them very simply, either in a portfolio or in simple mounts on picture ledges in your house. I purchased an "annual plan" from Shutterfly, for which I get something like a 30% discount on prints, so a flawless 11x14" print on great paper only costs $5.59. You can keep using the same portfolios or foamcore over and over and return the photos to their shipping tubes for archival. Cheap, easy, impressive - perfect.

In the past few years photo books have become one of the most popular ways to share photos, and with good reason. When you get back from Hawaii with your six full SD cards, you can pare them down to the fifty best photos, have a book made cheaply via Shutterfly or any of the other such services, and just leave the book out in plain view when company comes over. The photo sharing activity will just happen organically; like locking a dude and a hot girl in a room together for a couple of weeks - actuaries, anthropologists, and womanizers agree that human nature generally follows a predictable course.

Another method I like a lot is to simply plug a camera into a television and hand it to the most attention-needy person in attendance, e.g. a child. This way everyone still engages in the the temporal aspects of browsing pictures, but as a group. Giving suggestions/directions to the kid navigating the images adds another social dimension to the activity. Make sure to edit your photos - either in camera or on the computer - before you make someone else try to navigate them.

The least imposing way to bother your friends and family with photos is with a web gallery like Flickr. If you want other people to see pictures of your pets - and you're not William Wegman - this is the route for you. Your family and friends can skim hundreds of pictures at a glance and then truthfully tell you that yes, they saw the new Fluffy glamor shots, and yes, they enjoyed them, especially the one they noted for the specific purpose of proving to you that they looked at them. If you notice the theme of the order, this is also the least impressive medium for displaying pictures. The impression made by a photo takes a big hit when it ceases to be a physical object - moving from prints to a purely photon-based display - and the web is pretty much the last stop on the devaluation bus route. The upshot is that nobody feels compelled to look at pictures they don't like.

There are a few simple things you can do to help your pictures generate more interest in any presentation. First of all, edit ruthlessly. Photography has been aptly described by many artists and brainiac critics as the process of selecting and organizing interesting scenes from the disorganized universe. The selection process can continue long after the last shutter click. The most obvious way in which selection can continue is by selecting which pictures to display. Software can help; I try to steer newbies toward Google's Picasa software, which they provide free, no strings attached. Software like this - or Adobe Lightroom or the impressively overhyped Apple Aperture - gives you lots of tools for rating, sorting, selecting, and ordering pictures by any number of criteria you choose, including your own keywords. It is better to be too critical than too permissive in your self-editing; a tiny collection of an extremely few good pictures always looks better than a great herd of rejects with a few good ones thrown in. Don't show your rejects.

You can also revise your selection of scenes by cropping. Most underdeveloped photographers shoot way too wide with the subject in the middle. This makes for static, uninviting pictures, but the good news is that this composition flaw invites revision. Cropping basically lets you change the design of the photo, which gives you the potential to change its appeal and its meaning.

Design/composition is too big a subject to tackle in a couple sentences, but it's not rocket science. Get a book like "The Photographer's Eye" by Michael Freeman¹ and work through it. The world heavyweight champion of intro-to-composition books is "The Simple Secret to Better Painting" by Greg Albert, but using that book there is no hand-holding to figure out how to relate the concepts to photography. With any such a book you can move from hack to competent photographer in a week or two. There are even good videos on visual composition specifically for photographers.

Consider groupings and order in your presentation. Chronology is often the worst choice for any medium, even with a book that is easily navigable in any order. Put a little more thought into it. If you really think it's so important to document the exact order in which you apprehended the prefabricated plastic awnings at Holiday Inns and Best Westerns, make a separate design of it, e.g. a collage based on a map. Make something of it - chronology is not intrinsically narrative.

If you absolutely cannot help yourself - and your family and friends do not love you enough to intervene - and you decide that you must make a slideshow, consider the following. Your project is really a movie and not a collection of pictures; you have moved from the medium of photography to cinema, so adjust your thinking and your skill set accordingly. Tell a story with your slideshow. Even documentary films follow a pretty rigid narrative structure. If you can't make an outline of three act dramatic structure or the hero's quest from memory, your story is guaranteed to suck. Get some books from the library. This stuff is at least as old as the Hellenic Period, so there is no need to send your money to Amazon.com. Study cinematography. Cinematography is just a fancy word for the technique of making movies, which is exactly what you're engaged in. Again, the public library will probably have everything you need. And of course, DVD commentary tracks are widely touted as a poor man's film school, so you can start investing hours in those.

The best thing you can do to beat the odds against making a tolerable slideshow is to plan your movie on paper - or any fancier kind of storyboard, but paper is fine - and bend the software to execute your vision. This is opposed to the more popular approach of letting the software instruct you how to put together your show. Don't just use a stock template because it's easy; create your own movie from scratch that looks exactly as you imagine it. You'll notice that most big Hollywood blockbuster movies generally use cuts, dissolves, and deliberately designed text titles - that's it. No novelty wipes, no flying 3D text, no purposeless trucking/panning. Use the 100-year-old, well developed language of cinema for your cinematic project. Just because you can add music doesn't mean you should. Better yet, just because you can make a slideshow doesn't mean you should.

I think if you are interested in a moving presentation, you're more of a cinema person at heart. The good news is that cameras are starting to include better video features, to the point that hyperweenie, tech-watching nerds are already announcing that video and still cameras are merging into a single class of device. In the here and now, you can shoot adequate video (for home/web presentation) with any digital camera made in the past several years. I have a Canon SD450 that is practically an antique on the timeline of digital photography gear, and even it takes decent video. Why not make a video project instead of a collection of photos, or in addition to it?

I think the one thing you can do to make any kind of artistic exhibition more enjoyable is to simply let go of your creation once it is finished. When your friends and family come over to your house and you are dying for them to see your Hawaii pics, let them discover the pictures on their own. If you have photographs, let them flip through them at their own pace and without unsolicited commentary; if you have a movie, let them watch it without your additional narration. In general, say what you need to say in your art and let the viewer ask you for more information. If your art is good, they will be fascinated.

¹ This book is inexplicably titled the same as the older, vastly more important book by John Szarkowski, of which the author was doubtless aware. This is a great mystery to me, as the text is absent of the kind of hubris necessary to pull off the apparent stunt.

Another dump of old pics

2009-07-06T22:46:00.001-05:00

Snow in parking garage
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

Previously unreleased! Digitally remastered! Haven't seen that one in print or heard it in an ad in a long time - "digitally remastered." I miss that one.

I Heart Oprah Magazine

2009-07-06T11:17:00.004-05:00

I bought the current issue of Oprah Magazine. For myself. For real. The cover promises "OPRAH'S PRIVATE PHOTOS... We gave her a camera, she gives us a snapshot of her perfect lazy Sunday." The actual article is the absolute last content in the magazine - right inside the back cover but before the important inside-the-back-cover advertising; it has been tucked away as far as the editors/art directors could manage. It doesn't fit the magazine.

TANGENT: But this is proof that a publication/creative enterprise ruled by the proverbial benevolent dictator will always offer things that a rule-by-committee "Poochie" rag will miss. Clearly this article is off the mark regarding the message/image/whatever of the magazine - and the images are not of the same quality as all the editorial and ad stuff - but if Oprah insists that it goes in this issue, by god it's going in this issue. If nothing else, Oprah got me to buy one more of her magazines than I ever would have otherwise. So in the case study of whether Michael Gregory would buy this magazine based on content, Oprah's call on including her own snapshots was a good one.

BTW I wonder what kind of camera Oprah uses. I love the idea of her swatting at the etherial mirages of stasis in front of her with a midrange Canon A-series Powershot, for which she sent a staff member to Wal-Mart. "Could you run to Best Buy and get me a camera? Nothing too big, but I want one that takes good pictures."

What stuck me about the article itself was how heartening it is to learn that Oprah - one of the single richest people in the world - has the exact same impulse as everyone else to savor and try to capture small, enjoyable parcels of time - and especially that she struggles with it, just like the rest of it.

Her pictures are not great photography. They are better than those of any other non-serious photographer in her age group that I know personally - probably her friends get her unsolicited "Look what I did this weekend!" emails full of her pictures and actually reply saying how great her pictures are - but she's not an accomplished artist.

Even when you have some attainment in the basic grammar of the visual arts, it can be the most frustrating thing in the world to conjugate the simplest sentence. Even with supernatural Photoshopping skill and every other advantage, it is hard to convert intent into a coherent composition.

So I guess I was happy to see that Oprah - a person who probably has access to literally any resource extant on earth for making an image - struggles like the rest of us. She chose to try to capture by herself the impressions of a pleasant afternoon in her backyard, and she had a rough ride. She does manage to paste together a rickety account, spanning multiple images and heavy captioning, but clearly it was not easy. And for some odd reason I was glad to discover that Oprah, obviously a first-rate conversationalist, is not a great writer; she has good insights and gets the point across just fine, but Faulkner she is not.

Speaking of poor writing, I'm still not sure what I learned from this, what's my point, why I starting writing this blog post.

Man, how great would that be if Oprah got her camera from the disounted/discontinued bin?! And wouldn't it be awesome if she used that little mini-USB cable to connect the camera to the computer? You know she printed 4x6's of every one of her snapshots on a POS compact printer she [her assistant] got at the same electronics/discount store. God, she probably even set aside an 8x10" for her ever-growing stack of things to frame/scapbook/decoupage/whatever that she is realistically never going to have time for.

Real Bad Wrong

2009-07-06T11:12:00.001-05:00

Dick Ray
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

Check out my set "Real Bad Wrong" on Flickr. I originally created a site realbadwrong.com for these, but I was too lazy to do anything to drive traffic to it, including telling friends. I have found Flickr to be a much better place for my casual photographic endeavors.

Eugene at the hotel

2009-07-05T00:11:00.001-05:00

EugeneAtHotel
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

Had an unusual gig in a characteristic venue in a strange little town after a fascinating drive. So of course I came back with one interesting pictures. Part of the problem is that I don't have a camera that is both tiny and usable as a photographic tool. I am eagerly awaiting the day when a camera the size of an SD-series can creative a negative like a 5D - and be quick, responsive.

Amazing Trends

2009-07-03T08:43:00.008-05:00

In my ongoing effort to stay on the front edge of trends, I am hereby limiting my entire vocabulary of adjectives to the word amazing. So if I want hash browns with my breakfast at Waffle House, I order amazing browns. If I want to tell a salesman [amazingperson] that I want to look at a hybrid car, I say, "I am in the market for an amazing car."

Amazing I'm amazed that this amazing trend has come this amazing. In the amazing months I will be closely watching the adverb totally. I will be totally watching amazing adverb.

I have also decided that when I run for U.S. President in 2016, I will promise to promote legislation requiring all books even obliquely related to photography to include the word moment in the title. In the time being, I am publishing The Amazing Moment, my series of leather bound books with my photos and essays by Roland Barthes' great nephew:

2009-07-01T10:11:00.004-05:00

It is easy to grow pessimistic about USA's ability to respond well to tragedies. However, I am heartened by our ability to rise to this particular occasion with grace and elan.

Pecker

2009-06-30T12:23:00.007-05:00

I still don't fully understand the movie Pecker. I assume that a lot of the humor is reserved for those inside the NYC gallery scene and the very, extremely gay. But there is a growing list of indicators that it is a much more serious movie than it first appears.

First of all, there are serious people featured in the film. Cindy Sherman is hilarious as some version of herself - as a casual fan of her pictures I prefer to not know too much about her personal life - in Pecker she comes to the rescue of the manic, sugar-addicted character Little Chrissy, who is in the throes of a terrible jones, "Do you want a valium, honey?" The film also features Christina Ricci, who is probably the closest female professional-acting-career analog to Johnny Depp, so that bodes well. Lily Tayler is in it, too.

But I was most surprised by this movie, which I viewed for the first time last week, when this morning I caught up with the New York Times' Lens Blog, which ran a story on a blind photographer. This very improbability is presented as satire in Pecker.

New photos

2009-06-29T21:35:00.001-05:00

ride
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

Took my wife to Worlds of Fun (Kansas City, MO) for her birthday. Took a few decent pics there. Camera still works, despite getting soaked.

Takin a dump...

2009-06-28T12:22:00.001-05:00

Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

Dumped a few miscellaneous pics from an SD card that has been floating between compact Canon cameras for a while. Click on the pic to see the set on Flickr.

Longview Lake

2009-06-25T16:26:00.001-05:00

bike rack
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

I'm trying to achieve a critical mass of blog posts, so I posted these pics from a couple weeks ago. I walked around Longview Lake with my wife and a G9. Great wife, crap camera.

Nikon F35 AF

2009-06-24T22:30:00.002-05:00

Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

Sunday I went to a nearby thrift store, Maj-R-Thrift to mull over some new ideas on an old photo project, the nominal subject of which is thrift stores. I found what I think is the silver bullet for this project [an idea], PLUS I found another interesting vintage camera. Behold the Nikon F35 AF (click on pic to see the set).

This is a competent little shooter - and the interface is appealing and easy - but I think I should do my part to prevent the spread of Internet Overhype as regards this camera. It's not great. Not even good by my standards. The tone, color, and contrast were unpleasantly characteristic on the one roll of Fuji Reala I spent on this camera. It wasn't so far off that I couldn't bend the scanned, digital negatives back to reality, but it is not a good place to start from. Every bit of information I found about this camera online said that it was great. It's not. If it were as great as they say, you find some variation of this camera - Nikon One Touch, Sears knockoffs, etc. - in so many thrift stores. Since discovering this camera I briefly considered collecting all the fascinating variations on its design; it is like its own phylum in the taxonomy of film cameras. But the general crappiness of even the original made me think better of it.

Looking at this camera from my perspective - relatively ignorant, absolutely remote in time - it makes me wonder what made it so appealing. Actually it looked appealing to me after I read about the camera - I thought I had a great find. Even when I first got the CD of digital negatives from the lab, it took me a while to admit that they were junk. Sometimes when I am convinced of a camera's/lens' quality before actual use, it is very difficult to see what I am actually looking at.

test posting from blogger.com

2009-06-23T17:32:00.001-05:00

looks like you have to do this...

to embed a flickr photo. no slick interface.

had to paste code from the flickr page for that photo. how do you do page breaks for headlines?

And here is the rest of it.

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Vivamus eget nibh lacus, a accumsan eros. Praesent consectetur lacinia urna lobortis volutpat. Maecenas interdum magna a ante posuere posuere. Aenean porta est sit amet tortor suscipit aliquet. Vivamus quis metus ante. Cras in velit vitae lorem sollicitudin tempor. Vivamus elit arcu, egestas a ultricies accumsan, placerat nec tellus. Sed dignissim luctus aliquam. Nullam sed ipsum mauris, quis porta turpis. Donec ultrices magna sed turpis luctus vitae sagittis neque feugiat. Cras sollicitudin euismod leo. Nulla vitae justo non tellus iaculis tempus non ut nisl. Praesent ut vestibulum tortor. Nam aliquet viverra ligula ut scelerisque. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Ut tincidunt luctus nunc a auctor.

Suspendisse nec sem nibh, ac eleifend leo. Vivamus interdum sagittis rutrum. Nullam massa eros, feugiat at scelerisque ut, facilisis ut diam. Sed tortor metus, malesuada non pulvinar et, blandit a arcu. Morbi vulputate metus eget urna tincidunt iaculis. Aliquam erat volutpat. Nam sit amet orci quis orci eleifend semper vitae eu nisl. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Maecenas eget euismod dolor. Etiam congue justo eget ante facilisis viverra mattis mauris interdum. Etiam aliquam, massa id gravida tempus, enim metus vestibulum nulla, a semper tellus risus eget purus. Duis tortor turpis, porttitor sit amet rhoncus sit amet, dignissim sit amet est. Quisque imperdiet consectetur magna, eu suscipit neque dictum eget. Phasellus aliquet nisi in enim viverra molestie. Sed a consequat sem. Phasellus enim eros, dapibus in pretium sit amet, convallis ut eros. Ut facilisis dictum dui, non tempus nisl aliquam ac. Integer tincidunt dignissim consectetur. Aenean sit amet ipsum magna. Aliquam a tellus velit, id faucibus urna.

Maecenas id magna lorem, a dignissim velit. Aliquam vel mauris felis, in tristique quam. Nunc orci magna, semper et elementum ac, vehicula id ligula. Duis sed fringilla dolor. Nullam non lobortis libero. Suspendisse sem sapien, commodo vel rhoncus vitae, adipiscing ut odio. Duis pretium lobortis elit, a lacinia leo pharetra vitae. Nunc elementum lorem leo, eu vulputate nunc. Quisque a arcu a nisl dictum hendrerit eget vel tellus. Nunc eget sem eget libero dignissim euismod. Suspendisse potenti. Pellentesque id nunc ut erat lacinia venenatis ac id nisl. Duis pretium laoreet est, sit amet auctor elit sodales vel. Sed vel imperdiet erat. Curabitur mollis tortor nec justo pretium laoreet. Fusce a lectus tortor. Mauris sagittis, augue quis venenatis tempor, mi urna viverra lacus, et aliquam est augue sed velit.

Test

2009-06-23T17:31:00.001-05:00

Discarded-154
Originally uploaded by PhotoChemical

testing blogger/flickr combo. this is posted directly from flickr.com

Rear Window

2008-11-18T19:34:00.003-06:00

Rear Window is one of the most celebrated movies dealing with the nature of photography, though it was decades too late to be the first, and decades too early to be informed by the disciplined, codified philosophy of photography. It is nowhere near being the most profound comment on photography in the history of cinema, but it remains a landmark for all the normally cited reasons: it was the last big movie-about-photography made when photography was still the dominant medium in consumer culture (1954), it is a masterpiece of set design and cinematography, the composer's piece that develops throughout the film is novel, Grace Kelly was gorgeous, and it remains a sturdy survey of modern courtship.

It seems eerily prescient now, but at the most fundamental level, Rear Window is about the young [in 1954] generation's reluctance to enter and embrace the institution of marriage. The use of the hero's apartment lookout as a metaphor for a camera, and the camera as a metaphor for detachment from actual experience, is an elegant way of depicting a general shyness away from marriage. It is a remarkably balanced treatment, too - every justification for this reluctance is plausibly portrayed across the courtyard of the hero's apartment building.

Long story short: After Aperture's article reminding the reader about this movie in which photography was prominently featured, I was initially disappointed in the movie as an exploration of photo-related themes. But now I think that photography - and voyeurism, the other commonly misidentified theme - are only used in the film to illuminate the real subject, marriage. Without digging too deep into it, I think it safe to say that every apartment on display across the courtyard is a type for some kind of marital problem. The main characters' watching is a cute way of showing what they imagine as the problems with their potential outcomes.

The hero's apartment is the vantage of a reluctant potential husband, and the camera is mainly there to illustrate the point that separates seeing/considering/illustrating from doing. This film is not about voyeurism. Voyeurism is a metaphor for the hero's desire to cling to his outsider status as a bachelor. When the hero's nurse chides him about being a Peeping Tom, her alternative suggestion is to marry his girlfriend. Combined with Hitchcock's mischievous boner iconography, this figures into a complex statement about the hero's preference to observe from the outside, but I think the gist of all of it is that the hero becomes a deviant for not getting married.

Shortly after the heroine announces the possibility of the couple splitting, she ends up in the killer's apartment with the murdered wife's ring on; the hero is contemplating the consequences of letting her go to end up in a marriage to someone else, and it is the worst situation he can imagine. He is most distressed and most emotive at this point. When the killer - the ultimate marital discord - comes to the hero's door and asks "What do you want from me?" the hero has no answer ready. The hero is trying to avoid asking himself, "What's the worst that could happen?"

He tries to distance himself from the approaching killer/idea/scenario - using photography. Flash bulbs are the best weapon the hero can come up with to remain distanced from reasoning through his own situation, from confronting the worst that could happen. This internal struggle thrusts him through the "rear window" - in effect out the camera, out of the separation between seeing and doing, and into the real world, where he obviously will marry his girlfriend. The end is not shown - you have to figure out what the movie says in its own language to know what happens to the hero. It is most uncommon for a big Hollywood movie to do that nowadays. Extra points for subtlety.

One Hour Photo

2008-11-11T19:12:00.002-06:00

This movie is very much in the Kubrick universe in the way that it explores a single theme - in this case the roles of photography in the average Joe's life - in a stylized reality. I think this film excels anything by Kubrick, however, because of its elegant simplicity, its depth of coverage on a difficult and specialized subject - obviously of great personal interest to the filmmaker - and its intellectual honesty.

One Hour Photo is a great film. The fact that it was written off as a mere psychological thriller is probably a clue as to why nobody with the talent bothers to make movies like this. The opening credits appear as 135 roll negatives on a roller transfer inside a minilab. The names appear, a light appears from behind, and the story- which takes the form of a succession of images on a film roll - is assembled in metaphor. The light pouring through the negatives is a recurring theme in the One Hour Photo, though I'm slightly puzzled by what it signifies, other than changing modes - maybe markers between the three acts.

So there are already clever photography-themed gestures and riddles in the credits, when all you have seen is some type with background music. It is tempting to give a play-by-play account of the whole thing - it is such delightful puzzle to pick apart; but that wouldn't be very informative. I'll just describe the first scene to give you the flavor.

The opening shot is a big, imposing camera sitting atop a computer in a Kubrick-spaceship-style interior. It sits there, unmoving, as ominous music plays. There is a shutter release visible on the camera, but it stands there by itself; this is a movie about the camera, not one of its operators. Finally it flashes and the digital image of the hero scans onto the screen in horizontal strips; by the end of the movie it will become apparent that this signifies the end of the hero's usefulness in the outside world.

It immediately becomes clear that this is happening in a police station - the hero is getting booked. After turning for a profile shot, the police photographer, operating the camera via computer remote, delivers a line that is a characteristic double entendre, "That's it, sir, you're done. Please follow the orange line." Orange is one of the many color themes in the movie; it stands for a chain of causation, and is found everywhere throughout the movie from an interrogation room chair to a beautiful woman's lips. The detective in the first scene asks the hero what Will Yorkin (anti-hero/victim) did to upset him - what did he do to provoke all of this? - and the movie is off to a running start, recalling the events from the hero's perspective.

Before I further extol this film as an arty masterpiece, I should point out that it has a fantastic sense of humor. I present as evidence the names of the characters and places in the film. First of all, the hero is named Seymour Parrish, but he goes by the nickname Sy. Seymour is an obvious homonym for ""see more"", but the nickname is a little deeper. Psi is the name of a psychological theory about how cognition and emotion interface with the outside world and are regulated by an emotive agent; the hero's name seems to indicate that his interface is broken, ("Psi perish"), and this is reinforced by the broken-viewing-glass cliche so familiar in thriller movies - in this case the windshield of his car. The word Psi is also applied to parapsychological ideas, both paranormal perception and action. Supernatural action - telekinesis - barely qualifies as a metaphor in the case of the photographic themes in this movie. The hero inflicts violence on people with his camera; in the most extreme case there isn't even any film in the camera - he brings a grown man and his mistress to tears and convulsions by simply making them believe he is photographing them - and Sy's photography has far-reaching consequences. There is also a strong allusion to paranormal perception in the movie - a scene in which a mother and child "send good thoughts" to Sy, which I can only assume is included solely for the sake of exhaustive study of the hero's name. This last idea is not very compelling for people one the lookout for all things photographic, but the fact that it is ambiguous - and that it prompts you to consider what is wrong with general beliefs about photography - makes it a winner in my book. The final significance I came up with for the hero's name is the appearance of the Greek character Psi: it looks like a pitchfork. Seymour was a born visual artist - he was born to see more - but he has become Psi, an icon of the devil, because he has been foreshortened by childhood events we only learn about at the very end of the movie. That's just one name in the movie with a very playful sense of humor. Consider these others:

Yoshi Araki
Maya Burson
Edgerton Hotel
Mrs. Von Unwerth
Mr. Siskind
Detective James Van Der Zee
Detective Paul Outerbridge
Even the names of the actors cited on the IMDB page are so apt and funny that they can not be real:

Robert Clotworthy ... Eye Surgeon
Jim Rash ... Amateur Porn Guy

When Sy walks out at the end of his last day of work at Sav-Mart, discovering a big, scary knife that helps to send him on an artistically suicidal mission to execute his masterpiece, he exits via aisle 2b.

The whole film is cheeky, hilarious, and thoughtful like that. I think the biggest laugh the movie got out of me is when one of the detectives says that he intends to make Xerox copies of the flawless print of Sy's Sav-Mart Employee of the Month portrait. I already mentioned one of the color themes. Here are some others. Saturation level stands for fulfilling human interaction. Of course, Sy's world - right down to his skin and his attire - is pretty much monochrome. Interestingly, when he is at his job as a Sav-Mart minilab manager, he dons a bright, hyper saturated Sav-Mart vest. It becomes apparent over the course of the adventure that he gets great satisfaction from simply seeing happy families go about their business within the store.

The family that Sy most admires is always adorned with a deep, rich collection of perfectly harmonious colors. The wife, who complains of being emotionally neglected by the husband, is colored brown - the most desaturated form of red - but it is a deep, luscious brown, which, though technically desaturated, is still generally perceived as a rich color. Who but visual artists - knee deep in camera histograms and Photoshop - would ever pick up on that? I swear this movie was made for photographers only; it basically gives the finger to anyone who can't follow along - there isn't a lot of help for slowbies. It is apparent reading writeups of this movie in name papers that many reviewers missed most of this movie. Maybe the director explains all this stuff on the DVD commentary - don't know, I didn't look for one.

Another recurring color theme is the sickly green glow of fluorescent light, which signifies Sy's loneliness. This is absent in the conspicuously antiseptic, fluorescent lit Sav-Mart and police station interiors, which ironically would have to be gelled or shot on special film to get a normal white balance - but the ugly green light is present in full force when Sy is driving home. The doorway to his apartment is a thick shower of green light, but once he gets into his apartment the light settles down to a relatively normal warmth; the reason for that change in mindset is one of the most dramatic revelations in the film.

Another, subtler revelation is when Sy's tie becomes suddenly saturated between shots because he perceives that other people are thinking about him, caring about him. There are a number of themes explored in the movie that are really of interest only to photographers and intellectuals who stew over the philosophy of photography. For example, the roles of photography are explored in greater detail than any other movie I know of. The idea of pictures as a door to another world is run through the paces thoroughly and artfully. The technical production of photographs - in the very last seconds of the film age - is explored on all levels, including a very engaging and accurate special effects shot of the inner workings of a sophisticated 135 film point-and-shoot, as well as a montage of film developing and post processing inside a minilab.

Found photographs receive more attention than ever before in a movie, from objets trouves to recontextualized snapshots in a hip gallery type exhibit to phony evidence of a false life; there is even a narrated, rapid fire slideshow of photographs contemplating the roles of pictures - it hardly even relates to the plot. Privacy as it relates to photography is also an obvious theme.

There are other delights for photographers viewing this movie - and probably only for photographers. For example, when Sy is at a low point, he is simultaneously refreshed and impelled toward his tragic fate by the photographs of a little boy, which, it is revealed, are amazingly good renditions of the William Eggleston style. At the very end of the movie we first see Sy's own photographs - not counting the ones he took with obvious ill intent - which are similar but remarkably different in one important aspect from the child's exuberantly colorful art. The dog of the family that Sy admires is from the only breed explicitly associated with art photography [of William Wegman]: a weimeraner.

There is an endless string of photography in-jokes, like a gorgeous woman's inner character suggested by her choice of a Leica camera and Fuji Reala. I kinda suspect that even the title of the film refers to the nature of photography, that the film is itself a kind of One Hour Photo - a moving picture - that lasts a little over an hour and is a segment of Sy's life; a beautifully composed record of a surface that reveals much but conceals more, leaving the viewer to draw his own conclusions.

The most amazing thing about One Hour Photo is that the basic plot as a "psychological thriller" - the simplest level on which the film can be enjoyed - calls on the viewer to consider the nature of photographs. I mean that I don't think you can even understand what has happened, the simple details of the events, without thinking about how being photographed can harm a person. It's not a hard idea to digest, but it is an idea, which is not typically welcome in a big Hollywood movie. I suspect that's why this film was banished to the DVD bargain bins on a shelf below M. Night Shyamalan "classics".

I guess this whole series of blog posts is really a review of the Aperture article extolling Rear Window as a great movie on the meta level of photography. I suspect that Rear Window never was about photography, except as a metaphor for something else.

Memento

2008-11-04T10:04:00.003-06:00

The current issue of Aperture includes an article called "Re-Viewing Rear Window" by David Campany, in which he gives a few thoughts on what the Hitchcock classic movie means to photography today. In the article he casually mentions two other movies, both from the new century, in which photography is placed historically by now-quaint references to antique photographic technology. So of course I watched "Rear Window" again for the first time since I was a teenager and it was better than ever. Robert Burks was a killer photographer, and Grace Kelly was painfully gorgeous. But it didn't seem to have much depth in its commentary on the nature of photography.

Fast forward to the next entry in the suggested para-photography film festival, "Memento", which the Aperture article mentions as a mere curiosity for its use of Polaroid 600 film as a plot device at the time when this format first started to wane noticeably toward extinction. In my opinion, this movie contains much more probing inquiry into the nature of photography than the celebrated "Rear Window." It seems only natural that a movie with a quarter of century to chew on the philosophy of photography would do better than a movie that predates the progenitor of the field, Susan Sontag's On Photography.

Memento is the story of a Leonard Shelby, a former insurance claims investigator who, as a consequence of a home invasion in which he sustained a severe head trauma, is not able to form any new memories since the time of his injury. The events depicted in the movie's timeline span a few days; it is uncertain how long after his head trauma these events are unfolding, or ultimately, how many times he has already gone through a similar series of events.

Memento touches on the predatory nature of photography. First of all, the hero wears his Polaroid instant camera like shoulder-holstered gun, over his shoulder under his jacket. Also significant is the way that he uses his camera as his primary tool in hunting his quarry, the man he thinks murdered his wife. And, intersecting with other themes, the violence he inflicts on others doesn't become real to him until he photographs the aftermath of that violence.

This leads to another theme that was first introduced [AFAIK] in Sontag's On Photography: photography is the perfection of Surrealism. The hero of Memento lives in a parallel world constructed from his Polaroid photographs. He even has a map of this world over the bed in his noir-prescribed cheap motel room, with lines and arrows making the associations that his broken memory cannot. The nature of the photographs themselves are explored at a level of detail that cinema cannot usually manage. Leonard repeatedly says - and his saying is recited back to him - that he likes to look people in the eye when he talks to them. He doesn't do well on the phone. He asks the standard noir femme fatale, Natalie, to remove her sunglasses so he can... [gestures a connection between his eyes and hers].

Because of his inability to form new memories, when he meets someone he is forced to consult his stack of Polaroids and their captions - he needs to place them as friend of foe - and that methodology is extremely frustrating to him. This is a beautifully elegant illustration of photography's maddening, seductive ability to depict the surface of anything in gorgeous, exhaustive detail - but only the surface. I am reminded of a quote from Philip-Lorca diCorcia, from the BBC television series The Genius of Photography: "There is such a thing as photographic truth, but the truth is rarely relevant to the specifics of the image... that person is probably not what you think they're like, but what you think they're like is probably true - just not about them."

Pictures suggest things about people, but not necessarily their quiddity, and never enough. There is no number of portraits - snapshot or Avedon - that can reveal the person to you half as much as a good, alcohol-assisted conversation spanning ten minutes. But photos can illustrate a commentary point with greater economy than words. For example, the photo of Teddy, the hero's friend with dubious motives, shows him with his screwed up reflexively, as anxiously anticipating some consequence. It is about the time that this photo is taken that Teddy's standing as a friend is coming into serious question, and this informs the Polaroid portrait of Teddy that has been shown throughout the movie.

The way a back story influences a photograph really comes into play on another level with the portrait of Natalie. Her picture shows her form mostly in shadow, backlit by two windows. She is moving away from the big, warm-looking window toward a tiny window in sections that has a sharp point at the top - it does not look at all friendly. The design of the photograph is highly suggestive that she is moving - leading Leonard - toward some confinement or violence, or both. However, the meaning of the picture's composition changes when we later see the photo being taken, and it is seen that the small window is actually on the front door of Natalie's house, which is standing open into the front room - she is moving/coaxing toward an open door, escaping. The captions on her Polaroid are similarly changing in context: one caption is written first, "Don't trust her," which is later scratched out and replaced with "She has lost someone, too. She will help you out of pity." It turns out that both captions are based on ill-advised misreadings of the surface depicted in the photo.

Much is made of Leonard's memory of his dead wife. In a scene where the noir woman prods him to remember his wife, he is more alive - more in tune with and in command of the world, albeit a distant world - than any other time in the movie. He doesn't carry a photo of her, which underscores this inadequacy of pictures to capture an essence in time. He does carry some mementos from their life together, including a hair brush, a brasserie, a bedside clock, and a book. In a flashback he has a conversation with his wife about why she is reading the same book again, for the umpteenth time, for which she offers simply, "I enjoy it." She likes going over and over a beloved story, just as Leonard is doing by recalling that conversation. In the flashback, the cover has fallen off the pedestrian paperback book, supposedly from overuse, but as a cinematic device it serves to make the story in the book - the beloved memory that is enjoyable to relive again and again - contrast all the more starkly with photographs. The whole reason for the wife to exist on the plot level is to drive the hero's motives; but the reason for the wife to exist on the level of themes is to illustrate that photographs have little interface with real memory.

Memento does a good job of dramatizing/illustrating the way in which photographs serve to at first fix the memory of a moment, then to replace it. Throughout the story Leonard is faced with the problem of trying in vain to recall the actual memories for which his photos are supposed to stand as placeholders. The best authoritative quote I can think of on this subject is from Peter Galassi, New York MOMA's curator of photography: "That picture [LBJ being sworn in aboard Air Force One] belongs to the class of pictures that now stands for the event. The event is long gone. The whole process of discovering what had happened and learning what was going to happen next - that's all passed into history now. The picture stands as a kind of emblem - almost an abstraction that stands for that time."

In an interview with Filmmaker Magazine, Memento screenwriter Christopher Nolan gave an additional insight to how this phenomenon played out within the universe of the movie. Even the audience, taking in all this criticism of photography, when asked at the end of the film to replace what they have learned about Teddy from the photograph that the now-suspect hero has both taken and captioned, were unwilling to let go of the explicitly false memory presented in that photo in exchange for what was happening in the real world of the film: "Audiences seem very unwilling to believe the stuff that Teddy [Pantoliano] says at the end – and yet why? I think it’s because people have spent the entire film looking at Leonard’s photograph of Teddy, with the caption: 'Don’t believe his lies.' That image really stays in people’s heads, and they still prefer to trust that image even after we make it very clear that Leonard’s visual recollection is completely questionable. It was quite surprising, and it wasn’t planned."

Because he builds his reality up from photographs, Leonard comes to represent photography. It is a sobering - but accurate - indictment of photography that he doesn't ascribe much importance to his current state of being. When he is asked why it matters whether he avenges his wife's murder, he responds, "Just because there are things I don't remember doesn't make my actions meaningless." I.e. not being photographed doesn't drain events of meaning. He adds to this conversation the fact that he can easily photograph the results of the murder he will commit and then he will remember.

This movie uses photography's familiar monochrome/color dichotomy as a storytelling effect. The famous chronology of the film is not in continuous sequential order; there are two segments of a single timeline unfolding in parallel. The monochrome scenes happen chronologically before the pivotal event that sets the plot of the movie in motion, while the color scenes are presented starting with the conclusion of the plot, working backward in time to the pivotal event. The monochrome scenes are more or less narration - Leonard's extremely skewed perspective. His view is traditionally photographic - monochrome. The events in color offer a more objective view, and ironically, are truer to noir tradition, in which the viewer is led on a treasure hunt of motives and allegiances. As Stephen Shore suggests in The Nature of Photographs, because color pictures look more like the real world, there is less of a barrier for the viewer to enter the world of the photograph. The two timelines intersect as one of Leonard's Polaroids is developing, becoming visible at a rare moment of clarity during which he understands - just for a moment - that he has spent years of his life doing evil. The action fades from monochrome to color in a single shot. He then drives off into the future we have just watched, drawing conclusions he will obviously soon forget.

Ultimately Leonard is a type for the contemporary American, living in a world of contextless images. He is hostile toward text, in fact has become incapable of processing any complex train of thought on a subject because of the nature of his photographic world. Leonard's world - ironically set forth in a movie - is a brilliantly drawn dystopia as set forth in doomsayer tomes like Amusing Ourselves to Death and The Unreality Industry.

When I first saw this movie I was all geeked up about it. I watched it twice so I could put together the chronology and plot. It resonated with me and with just about everyone I interacted with regularly at the time. Everyone was talking about it. I suppose it is a validation of the movie's most abstract theme that now Memento is all but forgotten.

The Charles Dickens Laundromat

2008-02-01T03:28:00.000-06:00

Smiley and I checked out the local laundromat today. I imagine I could fill an expansive novel with the human saga suggested by archaeological evidence at the laundromat and our combined talents for prose. Here's the basic timeline of what we decided happened: 1952: U.S. Marine and Twin Falls, ID native Hayton “Buddy” Dodd is injured at Bunker Hill; best friend and Twin Falls High classmate Warren “Buzz” Cooper pulled him from his foxhole and sprinted 2 miles downhill with his friend on his back to a medevac, which successfully transported him to a field hospital, where doctors were able to treat his injuries 1954: Buddy and Buzz return to civilian life in Twin Falls looking for work, a place to settle down, and women with whom to settle. Utah has just abolished all casino gaming and a big, new, joint venture is being erected at the Nevada border. Both men take jobs at Cactus Pete's casino in the newly constructed-from-scratch town of Jackpot, Nevada. They commute together for two years and continue to live in their respective apartments in Twin Falls 1954: Buzz and Buddy attend a dance at Rancher's Hall in Twin Falls featuring Benny Goodman's band, where Buzz meets and dances with Jan Ogalman. They immediately hit it off, exchange numbers, and begin their courtship. Jan was born in 1935 New York, New York to an Estonian immigrant laborer father who worked at a pomade factory. Upon the commencement of the Great Depression, both father Andres and mother Eunice - who took on work as a seamstress when money became scarce – were desperate to try any promising new locale that might afford more prosperity. Andres, having read about Twin Falls, ID in what he did not realize was a tongue-in-cheek article in a discarded issue of Collier's Weekly, decided to move wife and then only daughter Jan to Southern Idaho in 1937. Jan was only 2½ years old at the time, but to this day, she still starts her oral biography with the fact that she was born in New York City. 1954: Oregon outlaws all casino gaming, hurting Buzz' prospects as a slots technician, a skill that easily translated from his military training as a communications officer. Buzz begins commuting to the newly relocated Cactus Pete's casino in Jackpot Nevada. 1954-1957: Buzz and Jan's courtship continues. Buzz broaches the subject of marriage early on, but is convicted that he must first own a home and offer a more sizable income before they may wed. Jan's conservative Estonian father, Andres, also insists that Buzz travel to Narva to commission the tailoring of a traditional top hat. Buzz resolves to do whatever it takes to earn his love's father's blessing. 1957: Buzz and Jan Wed. Buddy was the best man. The theme was “Rocket to Stars”. Bridesmaids' dresses featured aerodynamic flanges and fin-like trains. Great appreciation is unanimously expressed over Buzz' top hat, except among those in attendance who are not Jan's parents. 1957: Buzz and Jan move into a chic, newly constructed rancher one mile from Cactus Pete's casino, where Buzz has moved up to Slot Technician Supervisor. Buzz and Jan's house is conspicuously distant from the only two businesses in the unincorporated spread called Jackpot. Buzz reasons that as Jackpot expands and becomes a lively metropolis, their home will define the inner edge of the suburbs, and will become so valuable that the family may relocate to a more cosmopolitan locale, possibly New York City, to which Jan has begin to show signs of ascribing unreasonable idyllism. Jan secretly subscribes to Cosmopolitan Magazine. 1959: In pursuit of their dream to trade Jackpot for a denser congealing of civilization, Jan gets a job as a drink server. Not wanting to distress her conservative parents with thoughts of Jan serving strangers in a skimpy dress, Buzz and Jan tell Twin Falls friends and family that she actually works the front desk of Cactus Pete's Hotel. Buzz secretly subscribes to Playboy Magazine. 1960: While not yet on track with their financial plan, Buzz and Jan decide to conceive a child. They tentatively name the baby Hope [for a girl] or Brighton [for a boy]. The first child is stillborn. 1961: Buzz and Jan each cancel their magazine subscriptions and both secretly purchase individual subscriptions to The Economist. Jan begins knitting blankets and Buzz takes up model rocketry. 1963: Jan scores a deal with Cactus Pete's Gift Shop to sell her Blackfoot-Indian-Styled blankets on consignment. Despite the conflict provoked by the fact that both Buzz and Jan are deeply racist and both regard Blackfoots with extreme suspicion at best, the taste of entrepreneurial success influences their thinking about their plan for relocation. 1965: Called upon to cover for Cactus Pete's general maintenance staff, Buzz empties the change from the guest laundromat on the ground floor of the hotel. Here he learns two facts that give birth to the idea that will become his life's crowning achievement: first, that people pump a lot of quarters into laundry machines in Jackpot, and also that Cactus Pete Peirsanti plans to discontinue the laundry to make room for two more guest rooms. Buzz uses this information, which he overhears through a dryer exhaust duct, to plan a bold move. 1966: Buzz and Jan invest their entire nest egg, which they have scrupulously saved from their income earned at Cactus Pete's, in their new brainchild. Jackpot Coin Laundry, located just two blocks from Cactus Pete's and directly across route 93 from the new Four Jacks Casino, opens to the public. The location was a sources of some contention between Jan and Buzz. While Jan suggested that their best bet was in closer proximity to Cactus Pete's, where the overwhelming majority of travelers stayed in town, Buzz, his reasoning clouded by both an eye to the future and a growing resentment for his supervisor at Cactus Pete's, Bosco “Bungle” Peirsanti, Buzz insists on locating closer to the promising new Four Jacks Casino. Buzz and Jan both continue their employment with Cactus Pete's. 1967: Jackpot Coin Laundry turns in a profitable first year. Buzz estimates that at their current level of profit, their capital investment will be paid off by 1973, after which their nest egg will be rapidly rebuilt. With a conservative estimate resale value of the business, Buzz and Jan are sturdied by the promise of relocation to New York as soon as 1977. 1967: Jan becomes pregnant again, though they do not agree on the extent to which the pregnancy was planned. They tentatively name the baby Sarah [for a girl] or Abraham [for a boy]. Inspired by their newfound hope – and Jan's evolving figure – Jan quits her job as a drink server to focus on making blankets and raising the baby. Buzz buys and installs a new style of prefabricated “Mobile Home” [trailer] adjacent to the Laundry so that Jan can make change on demand and have more space for her blanket operation. Jan begins selling blankets directly to customers at the Laundry. Buzz builds a tool shed next to the trailer and Laundry. 1968: The baby is stillborn. Buzz and Jan both cancel all magazine subscriptions and start watching television. Buzz' favorite show is “Route 66” and Jan's is “The Dean Martin Show”. Buzz moves his now-extensive collection of Playboy magazines to his tool shed at the trailer adjacent to the Laundry. 1969: Jan begins an unplanned pregnancy in January of 1969 and they tentatively name the baby “Junior”. Junior Cooper is born September 11, 1969. 1970: Jan becomes weary of the morning commute to the trailer adjacent to the laundry. She begins taking a change of clothing and staying overnight in the trailer. Not wanting to spend the night without her husband, she implores Buzz to stay with her. Though they continue to receive all mail at the ranch home, and they never acknowledge the move, they take up permanent residence in the trailer. 1972: Jan succumbs to depression and begins to drink hot toddies during the day. She buys her honey and lemons in twin falls for fear of reproach among the people of Jackpot. Junior's development in language skills is hampered by 8- and 12-hour stretches of silence. 1973: Buzz begins an affair with a drink server 15 years his junior. It will last for the remainder of his life. Jan in her stupor will never suspect that Buzz is cheating. Guilt-stricken Buzz begins overcompensating by spending more time doting on Junior, despite an obvious deficit in parenting skill. 1974: Buzz and Jan redouble their efforts to accrue a sufficiently sizable nest egg to relocate to New York City. Buzz installs a soap vending machine and adds two sets of high capacity washers and dryers in the Laundry. As the population of Jackpot grows, primarily as a function of the expansion of the Casinos' employee pool, the Laundry continues to become more profitable. Buzz draws up a budget and discovers that, if he can sell the laundromat for a very modest profit against his original capital investment, the family can relocate as early as January of 1977. 1975: The Coopers are advised to detain Junior from entering Kindergarten for another year, citing developmental issues as tactfully as possible. Jan contends that Junior is an exceptional genius and that he is too smart for kindergarten. Buzz never speaks his opinion on the matter to another living soul, but does take a renewed interest in Junior, bringing him along on every repair oriented errand, from special jobs at Cactus Pete's to odd jobs around the laundromat. 1976: Junior is finally allowed to enter kindergarten and is implicated in a mysterious fire. He makes friends easily, much to the consternation of his father, primarily because of the social circles to which Junior seems to gravitate. Jan begins sharing her toddies with Junior in small doses. 1977: Buzz is forced to acknowledge Jan's alcoholism. He takes steps to minimize the damage the problem will do to the family, including the installation of a new kind of electronic change machine in the laundromat. With conduit, wire, and receptacle in place, Buzz plugs in the new change machine. Junior, age 7 and uncomprehending, having watched the entire process, shoves a penny into the junction box that houses the 110v receptacles for the new change machine. Buzz instinctively moves his son away from the dangerous voltage and takes over the task of retrieving the penny without stopping to think of his own safety. The high voltage passed through his right hand, directly to his left foot, which was in standing water on the floor. The spasms from his electrocution and subsequent heart attack sent quarters from his coveralls pockets flying about the entire laundromat. Memorial services are both paid for and hosted by Cactus Pete's, including a memorial buffet dinner with crab legs, sirloin steaks, and made-to-order omelettes. The shock of her husband's passing brings Jan out of her stupor. Realizing that she is in an income deficit with just the laundromat and her blanket production, she risks the nest egg and contracts the construction of a building next to the Jackpot Coin Laundry. The building is to be a Mexican restaurant called “Aye, Arriba!”. The laundromat continues to be her primary source of income. Down to the last $2500, Jan decides to give up on the restaurant fantasy and open a very loosely conceived retail outlet, which turns out to be part gift shop, part convience store. DesperateDesparate from seeing her own hand writing a check for her last bit of money, Jan casts her fate to the wind and orders a combination VCR/TV and about a dozen of her favorite movies. Buddy does plumbing – Jan offers cactus pie and $20. just as he is about to leave Jan rolls out space heater that she wants mounted. Buddy, cussing, puts it up as fast as he can manage, using scrap and salvage parts from his old friend's workshop (including the garbage can in the workshop). [unlicensed] Video rental business takes off About to move to NYC, Junior gets in big trouble and nest egg goes toward his legal defense. truck – clutch is loose; neighbor fills tires for quarterly trip to Twin Falls junior is handyman in twin falls jr married Shoshone girl, of whom Jan does not approve, but Jan loves her grandkids 2008: Jackpot is still unincorporated. Four Jacks Casino is for sale and is currently being eyed by Iranian investors as a possible location for a discount brothel. The Cooper family ranch home on the outskirts of Jackpot remains uninhabited, except for jackrabbits and lizards. NOTE: I am going to have to finish this later, if ever. I haven't done an actual blog post in over a week, and now I'm not even going on photo safaris because my blog is bogged down in this thing. EJECT

2008-01-23T03:21:00.002-06:00

Here are my miss-and-hit impressions of my week driving to and living in Jackpot, NV. I am currently on the casino circuit playing with Matt D. Ward and Random Tuesday (that's one band). 2008.01.23 Super Marathon Drive I don't know whether it is bad blog form to do so, but I am going back through some of what I wrote almost a week ago and editing it before I upload this entry. Looking back most of the memories I cite leave no lasting impression.

What has stuck most with me from the super colossal 18-hour drive to Jackpot, NV is the quiet majesty of the rocky mountains as seen from the high passes that Interstate 80 cuts through them. The effect was amplified by obscurity in the sparse light of the full moon as we passed through the mountains from dusk to the early hours of the morning. Sorry – no pictures. 2008.01.24 First Full Day in Jackpot, NV Wow - talk about a faraway place - this place is far away from anywhere. Jackpot, NV is far away from the closest town, Twin Falls, ID, which is the hometown of the our server at breakfast. A woman six-and-a-half months pregnant, she seemed to be in a unique state of acuity about her little corner of the world; either that or she is unusually observant. She gave us a quick rundown of both Jackpot and Twin Falls, ID. Jackpot is basically a strip of casinos on a highway between small towns. Most of the businesses on this end of "town" are owned by Ameristar, from the two casinos where Random Tuesday is playing to the general store that serves as the sole grocer/retailer. The general store reminds me so much of the little grocery in the tiny map dot/farm town where I grew up. The lighting is spartan and of course fluorescent. The selection of groceries is a dense fruitcake of paradoxes: the shelves are packed to capacity in tight formation barely spacious enough to accomodate a single cart but there is no more than two of any particular item; the shelves are characteristically stuffed with branded, manufactured foods, but an unusually high proportion of the brand names are unfamiliar (I learned later that nearby Twin Falls, ID is home to a big production facility for food manufacturer Glanbia, which explains some of that); the grocery seemed generously overstaffed and the prices are higher than at a big city grocery chain - and on and on. Same feeling as a tiny grocery in a resort area, too.

I was told that "nobody" lives here, but I got caught in a stampede of schoolchildren walking home from somewhere at about 3:30 in the afternoon, so apparently there is a school and there is at least one neighborhood. The one neighborhood may be the one in which the casino has put up the band; it has the feeling of military barracks, well- but spartanly-built, furnished but I would hesitate to say decorated. At a glance the little shoebox strips of apartments look like mobile homes, but they are permanent structures. Today I was too chilly and too sick [with a cold and sore throat] to explore much. I went to the general store to get a 750 of good scotch for my throat and came home right after breakfast. I am going to woodshed a little and take a nap before it is time to go play. First Performance We played to a total of 7 people the entire night, including casino staff. They told us that Thursdays are always dead. They let us go an hour early after we rehearsed "Senorita" several times in a row onstage. 2008.01.25 Brush with greatness: I had an order from American Musical Supply delivered to the hotel because I realized too late that I needed a couple items for this leg of the tour. For some reason or another it got delivered to the casino concert venue, where the Oak Ridge Boys are playing tonite. The guy who must have been their road manager called me and told me he had my package. As I walked in, seeing, the marquee, I realized who was setting up inside, and I fantasized that maybe somehow I could finagle my way into getting to sing that part on "Elvira" that goes, "Giddy up-p-oom-pa-pa-oom-pa-pa-mau-mau...". I wasn't able to put that together. NOTE: I learned later that nobody was playing that night, and the sign I saw advertising the Oak Ridge Bodys at the entrance to the venue was for a concert in February. 2008.01.26 The most remarkable thing I encountered today was an armed security guard for the casino who is almost certainly called "The Kid" by the senior security staff. He looked to be about 16 years old [I assume he's older]. In the few minutes I spent shooting the breeze with The Kid, waiting for “The Band Key” to get into the backstage area, he told me that it was his third day on the job. At the time of writing, he must have more than tripled the number of hours on the job, so he's probably learned by now to not give away his weaknesses to strangers. He did get called into action on that, his third night, first when one of the cowboys manhandling his woman handled her a little too hard, and later when a druuuuuunk redneck literally fell off his barstool.

2008.01.27 Smiley and I went to Ameristar's elaborate brunch and then on a hike around 1/2 of the circumference of the entire town of Jackpot. We ran out of road about a mile into the hike and hopped a fence to the airstrip that the casino had doubtless built in hopes of attracting high rollers. I had seen rabbit tracks in the hotel parking lot, which got me thinking that I really hadn't seen any wildlife other than birds in Nevada. But then on the airstrip we did stumble upon a big jackrabbit with even bigger ears. Tonight's was a gig of contrasts. I was sucking wind, watching the clock, trying to remember why I liked music – or whether I did really like music. It was a genuinely horrible circumstance: small, unengaged crowd, my own ego-crushing bad improvisations. During a break Smiley, presumably to cheer me up, broke into a unbelievably hilarious, ironic application of the Kenny Chesney song "Shift Work". I was so down I was at my wits' end, laughing off bad energy I could have used to start a fight or cry in a corner. Then in walks the band from the gig across the street. The bass player got up with us first, and eventually the whole band minus guitar and drums was up onstage with us. I was on fire – it was about the best time I've ever had playing music, and I played extremely well for where I am in my musical quest right now. It's funny how wanting to play makes such a big difference. On the way home I pledged to myself to find my own means and my own reasons to enjoy music, regardless of the circumstances. 2008.01.28 Today was a very poor practice day – I spent maybe an hour of actual focused time shedding, but I'm still marking it up as a win. I got a new [nearly free] phone that is a decent music player [LG “Chocolate”], including headphones that sound reasonably detailed and balanced. It has already started a deep change in my listening habits.

We did go to Twin Falls, ID as a band, (so far we haven't done many things as an ensemble other than perform onstage). We were officially going on a turnaround trip to Wal-Mart, and I was hoping to talk the rest of the guys into seeing a few historic locales in this most fascinating city. We ended up going to Target, which was much closer, after which we went to a couple of shabby mom-and-pop music stores and then to the mall, where we kicked it high school style, being idle, loud, and cheap. I didn't even get my phone at the mall – I walked from the strip mall on the corner of the same block. It turned out that Matt was meeting up with a girl he had met at the venue Friday night, so we gave him time and space for that.

How You Can Tell You're in a Budget Hotel You can easily rank all six of your bath towels on criteria like age, whiteness, and softness, as well as overall suitability. It's crystal clear: "Man, it's gonna be hard times when I get down to number 4."